The Poetical Works of the late Mrs Mary Robinson ::

O thou! all wonderful, all glorious Pow'r!
That through the soul diffusest light sublime,
And bidst it see th' omnipotence of God!
O sight! to man the vivifying lamp,
That, darting through the intellectual maze,
Giv'st to each rising thought the living ray!
As the Promethean touch awoke that source
Whose glory warms the Planetary world,
So the supreme illum'd the visual orb,
To mark his works, and wonder at his pow'r!

Transcendent gift! but for thy light divine,
Oh! what a chaos were the mind of man!
Compos'd of atoms, exquisitely fine,
Each moving in a dark obstructed sphere,
Forlorn, and undelighted! for to him
Whose eye ne'er drank the widely beaming ray,
What are the wonders of the starry worlds;
Creation's fair domain, its gems, its hues,
And all its bright diversity of charms?

What are his faculties, his passions, thoughts?
He labours through a wilderness obscure,
Each other sense awaken'd, wanting still
That sense divine, which gives to each its charm;
The earth, to him, a solitary speck,
For ever mournful, and for ever drear!

Oblivion horrible! to know no change;
Nor light from darkness! nor the human form,
The image of perfection infinite!
To fashion various phantoms of the brain,
By each amus'd, and yet by each deceiv'd!
To roll the aching eye, alas! in vain,
And still to find a melancholy blank
Of years, and months, and days, and ling'ring hours,
All dark alike, eternally obscure!
To such a wretch! whose brightest sense of bliss
Is but the shadow of a waking dream,
The sleep of death, with all its startling fears,
Must teem with prospects of Elysium!
For what is sleep, but temporary death;
Sealing up all the windows of the soul,
And binding ev'ry thought in torpid chains?
Yet, only for a time the spell controuls,
And soothing visions gild the transient gloom;
For every active faculty of mind
Springs from the numbing apathy of sleep
With renovated lustre and delight!

But he who knows one unenlighten'd void,
One dreary night, unbless'd with cheerful dreams,
Lives in the midst of Death; and, when he sleeps,
Feeds a perpetual solitude of woe,
Without one ray to dissipate its gloom.

Then what to him avails the varying year,
The orient morn, or evening's purple shade,
That robes Creation in a garb of rest?
What all the beauties of the vast expanse,
The tint cerulean, or the vaulted arch
Of Heaven's eternal dome! Can Fancy paint,
With all the vivid magic of her pow'r,
The spangling legions of the sphery plains;
The gaudy-vested Summer's saffron glow,
When proudly gilded by its parent Sun,
As through the flaming Heav'ns his dazzling car,
Burnish'd with sparkling light, sheds liquid gold
O'er seas ethereal; while the breezes stay
To kiss the fainting flow'rs, whose silky heads,
Inclining, fade beneath their with'ring touch?
Can Fancy give the rainbow's lustre pure
To the cold vacuum of the sightless eye?
Insensible to colours, space, or form,
Stumbling and fearful, through a desert shade,
Man gropes forlorn, and lab'ring like the Mole;
He feels the vivifying glow divine,
But, 'midst the blaze of radiance infinite,

An isolated being, wanders still,
Sad, unillum'd, disconsolate, and lost!

Nor yet alone the misery extreme
Of the dread gloom opaque involves his mind;
The longing for that something yet unknown,
Whose pow'r he feels, diffusing its warm touch
O'er ev'ry sensate nerve! that Power which marks
The varying seasons in their varying forms,
That tells him there is yet a sense untried,
Ungratified, yet fraught with heavenly bliss,
Distracts beyond the certitude of pain,
Chills the expanding source of mental joy,
And deadens all the faculties of man!

Ah! woe too exquisite for human thought!
Of mortal miseries, the dread supreme!
How can the soul its energies sustain,
When Reason's crystal gates are clos'd in night,
And cold Oblivion hovers o'er the mind?
What are the horrors of the dungeon's gloom,
The bolts of steel, or the flint-fretted roof,
The temporary spells that shut the wretch
From the bland glories of effulgent day?
While Hope comes smiling on the wings of Time,
And the small crevice in his loathsome cell,
That promises a glimm'ring stream of light,
Bids him look forward to the coming joy!

What are the self-created, anxious fears,
That, thronging round the midnight traveller,
Give to his straining eye fantastic forms,
And fills imagination's boundless scope
With shadowy hosts, scaring his startled mind;
While Silence reigns despotic o'er the plain;
Save where the bird of solitude salutes
The melancholy hour, and pours alone
Her love-bewailing song; yet hope beguiles,
Nor quits him as he strays, 'till the wan moon,
Peering in silvery panoply of light,
Sails placidly sublime through the still air,
And scatters round her imitative day!
But the unvarying cloud of deepest night!
The blank perpetual of the sightless orb!
The mournful chaos of the darken'd brain!
No hope can animate, no thought illume;
All is eternal solitude profound;
A dreadful shade, that mocks each other sense,
And plunges Reason in its worst abyss!

And yet, in such a mind, so whelm'd in gloom,
The pure affections of the soul still live!
The melancholy void is subject still
To the sweet magic of seraphic sounds;
The soothing eloquence of sacred song;
The whisp'ring gale, that mourns declining day;
Or Philomela's soul-subduing strain,

That woos lone Echo, from her viewless seat,
To sail aërial-thron'd upon the breeze!
The lulling murmurs of the wand'ring stream;
The ever rippling rill; the cataract fierce;
The lowing herds; and the small drowsy tones
That, from the insect myriads, hum around;
The love-taught minstrelsy of plumed throats;
The dulcet strains of gentle Consolation!
But, most of all, to that lov'd voice, whose thrill,
Rushing impetuous through each throbbing vein,
Dilates the wond'ring mind, and frees its pow'rs
From the cold chains of icy apathy
To all the vast extremes of bliss and pain!
For, to that voice ador'd, his quiv'ring pulse
Responsive beats! he marks its ev'ry tone,
And finds in each a sympathetic balm!
Ill-fated wretch! he knows not the sweet sense
That feeds upon the magic of a smile!
That drinks the poison of the murd'rous eye,
Or rushes, in an ecstasy of bliss,
To snatch the living roses from the cheek!
He knows not what it is to trace each charm
That plays about the symmetry of form,
And heightens ev'ry timid blushing grace,
More lovely, from the wonder it commands!
He never mark'd the soul-expressive tear!
The undescribable and speaking glance,
That promises unutterable bliss!

Then what to him avails the ruby lip,
Or the rich lustre of the silky waves,
That half conceal the azure tinctur'd eye,
As golden clouds rush on the morning star,
And glow, exulting, o'er its milder ray!

O glorious sight! sublimest gift of God!
Expansive source of intellectual bliss!
By thee we climb to immortality,
Through all the rugged paths of tedious life!
Thy nerve shoots forth a light ineffable,
That marks the fount of science, and reveals
The many-winding paths of wisdom's maze!
Thou canst within thy narrow vortex grasp
The outstretch'd ocean, and the landscape wide,
Diversified with craggy cliffs, whose heads
Hang fearfully sublime, half veil'd in clouds,
O'er the low valley's solitary breast!
'Tis thine, upon the mountain's dizzy edge
To ponder on the wonders of the sky!
Or, bending o'er the margin, trace below
The world of mingling atoms, less'ning still
As the dread cavity grows more profound;
Till woods, and lakes, and scatter'd villages,
And stately palaces, and lofty spires,
Fade in the deep impenetrable gloom!
Thou canst avert the storm that gathers round,
And bids thee seek the hospitable roof

Where meek philanthropy unfolds her store!
'Tis thine to contemplate the gorgeous Sun
In all its majesty of living light,
Flaming, despotic, o'er unnumber'd worlds!
'Tis thine to mark the snowy-vested plains,
That, like the glitt'ring stores of Avarice,
Dazzle and chill the wretched wand'rer's soul!
Or, midst the wreck of Nature, still secure,
Gaze where the black'ning tempest, bursting round,
Tears the young branches from the parent trunk,
And strips the forest of its loftiest pride!

And yet! so wonderfully form'd to meet
The cutting blast, the winged lightning's glare,
The painful radiance of the scorching Sun;
To watch the midnight taper's glimm'ring flame
O'er the long studious page, or pore intent
Upon the fine-wrought mysteries that lurk
In art mechanical! to trace the stars
Through all their devious labyrinths of air;
To plunge amidst the foamings of the deep;
Or pour the copious torrents from that spring
By pity cherished in the human breast!
Yet—so alive is ev'ry wondrous part,
In each complete, in all pre-eminent!
So exquisitely delicate each nerve,
So subject to destruction and to pain,

That the minutest particle obscure,
Almost invisible to that it meets,
Obstructs its pow'rs, and o'er the visual ray
Rolls a huge mass of agonizing shade!
Such are the horrors, such the pangs acute,
That shroud the darken'd eye, whose mortal sense,
Consign'd to one unbless'd and mournful night,
Can by eternal day alone be cur'd!
Where the dim shade shall vanish from its beams,
And, bathing in a sea of endless light,
The renovated orb, awoke from death,
Shall snatch its rays from immortality.

University of Virginia Library

SIGHT.

INSCRIBED TO JOHN TAYLOR, ESQ. OCULIST TO HIS MAJESTY.